Whoever we need to be
by MutantSquirrel
Summary: She's dead on her feet, but Clarke is too stubborn to let something as petty as exhaustion stop her, not when there is more work to do. The problem is there is always more work to do. Post episode 08, Exploring Clarke and Bellamy's uneasy peace.


She's dead on her feet, but Clarke is too stubborn to let something as petty as exhaustion stop her, not when there is more work to do.

The problem is there is always more work to do.

Her ribs ache the most, the bruise Dax had left blossoming to a painful blue already. The rest of her body just feels wrung out, like she hasn't slept for a week. Still, Clarke trudges on through the low fires of the slumbering camp, to the place she knows he will be.

"Princess." He says in greeting, not even bothering to turn and look.

Of course he can tell who she is by the sound of her footsteps alone. He probably has x-ray vision too, and echo-location.

"Moon-gazing?" She asks clambering up next to him on the lookout post the camp had rigged. wincing as she stretches her punished ribs climbing the scaffold.

Bellamy is pensively still, the planes of his face outlined by the waxing moon high above them. It's rare to see him so motionless so she just sits beside him, takes in the huge expanse of the night sky.

After living in the Ark all her life sometimes she is terrified by the openness of the world. She lets the fear roll over, breathes in the deep pungent smells of the forest. Awe. Awe is what she feels.

Bellamy sighs finally. "I'm wondering what will happen to me once Jaha and the others get here." His voice is low, a deep soft rumble. "Do you know what I was on the Ark? A janitor." His laugh is joyless. "A boy from seventeen with no other options."

She tries to imagine Bellamy pulling a mop and pail behind him and fails. The idea is utterly ridiculous. She smiles slightly, bumps her shoulder against his.

"Well there's no floors to sweep here Bellamy, I guess you're out of a job."

He looks at her, like she is completely unfunny. She isn't really. She's too tired to do levity well. Back to business.

"Come on Bellamy, I need to clean your face." She tugs him gently from their perch. "I didn't drag you back to camp so you could get sepsis and die."

He follows in surprising compliance, her silent shadow. She struggles with the unfamiliar sensation she feels at his side, now that they are at uneasy peace with each other. It disturbs her slightly when she finally places it: safety, even bloody and beaten his presence makes her feel more safe than she's felt in weeks.

When had Bellamy gone from being her biggest fear in the camp to the one she most trusted to have her back?

He lets her seat him in the med tent as she digs around in the scant boxes of medical supplies until she has what he needs. His hands are on his thighs, still clenched in tight fists he can't seem to loosen.

She touches them carefully, uncurls them deftly, examines the abrasions and gashes with a physician's eye. The marks criss-cross and decorate his long fingers in bands of rust red and black, but none of them seem alarmingly deep. She can almost hear her mother's voice in her head.

_That's good, no mobility loss._

"This will sting a bit."

He doesn't even flinch as she starts debriding the wounds with a scrap of rag dipped in Monty's moon-shine. His quietness is a tad unnerving as she cleans dried blood and grit from his grazes. She finds herself talking just to fill in the silence, talks about nothing, about the camp. The people who had been ill today from the hallucinogenic nuts: two cases of dehydration, three of exhaustion, one girl had felt compelled to cut her hair and gave herself a nasty cut when her hand slipped. All in all it hadn't been too bad for their first run-in with a potentially toxic food stuff.

Bellamy nods in all the right places, makes the right noises but she can tell he's far away.

She turns his hand over, cups it with her own as she cleans the cuts on his palm. His fingers alone practically dwarf hers entire hand. Even relaxed she can feel the coiled strength in them. This is what the mouse must have felt pulling the thorn from the lions paw.

"Earth to Bellamy." She says finally when he fails to respond to a question.

At last Bellamy seems to snap out of his introspection.

"Miller is planning a mutiny." He says it flatly, like he was continuing a conversation they'd been having the entire time.

"What?" She grips his hand in surprise, he barely winces in response. "Sorry. I — when? With who?"

"The harder kids from lock-up will follow him. As to when," He shrugs, "it'll happen sometime after Jaha arrives."

"But, how do you know?"

"Because it's what I would do."

She can see his eyes are deadly serious. They have that eerie focus he gets, like a predator's.

"I didn't realize before because I thought Jaha was definitely going to kill me" He rubs his . temples. "now I just think he probably will. Now I know how the others must feel."

Clarke shakes her head, all her thoughts a cacophony in her head. "He pardoned you, Bellamy."

He is just being paranoid, he has to be. But he'd known what would happen when she revealed Well's killer was among the camp. He always seemed to know what people would do next.

"Can you honestly tell me Jaha has never gone back on his word before, Clarke?"

She thinks about what her mother had said about her father's death; how Jaha was meant to talk him out of revealing the damage to the oxygen systems, not float him.  
Her silent frown is answer enough for Bellamy.

"The council has had complete power for too long to give it up Clarke," his gaze fixed on hers, "And even if they did, what about the families of the people who the hundred have wronged? Do you think they are just going to accept a pardon for someone who murdered their child, their parent?"

She tries to find the holes in his logic and can't. There is no love for Jaha and the council here among the hundred, the place is ripe for mutiny one way or another. Hasn't she seen the people's lust for retribution with Murphy? What fear can motivate people to do with Dax? How else would the council react except to wipe out the threat before it began?

"Civil war will devastate us Bellamy, we're barely surviving as it is." She sighs, bowing her head, feeling the full weight of the day's trauma overpower her finally. Even her bones feel old as the realization of just how fucked they are hits her. "And we just armed them with guns. It will be slaughter on both sides."

Bellamy lifts her chin gently with his battered hand, dark eyes sincere.

"We'll figure something out." The change from the lost boy she saw in the forest is a turn around. His words hold absolute surety. "I'll talk to Miller, find out what plans are in motion. The only way I can hope to control this is from the inside."

She nods slowly. She wasn't lying to Finn earlier, she does trust him. They would face it; they would find a way through it somehow.

They lapse back into silence again as Clarke cleans the bruising on Bellamy's cheeks, carefully tilting his head with one hand and cleaning with the other. Eventually, he sighs and his own exhaustion shows as his head sags into the palm she is using to prop up his chin. She lets it rest there, cupping his face like some strange parody of a lover's. Wipes the blood delicately from his skin, takes away the blood, the grime, the hurt.

It should feel too intimate but Clarke has gone far too long without proper human contact to push him away. Too long in solitary, too long since Finn… So she lets him rest there, looks at him properly for the first time since they got to earth. She takes in the ebony crescents of his closed lashes, the bloodied cupids bow of his resting mouth. He looks so much younger like this, only a few years older than her and the rest of them. It sends a sharp burst of anger through her.

Jaha had sent them to the earth to die, and now she realizes he probably means it to happen eventually anyway.

"We may have to run after all." She says, firm voice surprising herself. She hadn't meant to speak. Bellamy opens his eyes and blinks at her, straightening from her touch.

"We?" he asks, the implication clear. Even after everything has happened he still sees her as the spoilt princess from the Ark. Still sees her as 'other'.

"You. Me. Everyone. Jaha and the council means to kill when they get here." She means it. She's still not certain it will happen but if it comes down to the council and the hundred she knows whose side she'll stand on. To hell with them, to hell with Jaha, the council… her mum… to hell with them all.

Bellamy somehow manages a half smirk through a split lip. "You joining the rebel army, Princess? Going to turn us all into freedom fighters?"

She throws the bloodied rag into a bucket with more force than necessary. Meets his eyes.

"Whoever we need to be to survive."

**Fin.**


End file.
